Tootfinder

Were I rich enough to understand—and afford—lettuce futures, I’d be very excited about this #AndyBurnham chap.
#ukpol

Andy Burnham win restores some faith in humanity!
#ukpol

So we're getting a new Prime Minister. This will be what, our 7th in 10 years?
#UKpol #KeirStarmer #PrimeMinister

RE: #UKpol

That's it then, he's met the king and is the new PM.
Reckons that first things first, he's going to end rough-sleeping. Apparently something they tell me he achieved in Manchester.
Corbyn's big first day announcement if he won was going to be that he would end homelessness immediately.
Which can only really mean putting the homeless into hostels and hotels.
But good. Certainly that's an about-fucking-time sort of announcement.
If he ends people having to sleep on the streets in the first week then I can only approve of that.
#burnham #homelessness #ukpol

Burnham's team have a plan of some sort coming in a book #ukpol #burnham #manchesterism #productiveState

Well, the Makerfield by-election is over. Voting just closed.
I don't live there, but if I did I think you gotta vote Labour in order to destroy this Labour government.
Which is in itself pretty mad. Demonstrating the utterly broken nature of the whole political system.
This is surely the only circumstance in which I switch away from the Greens.
As I said last month, they absolutely should have stood and spoke in front of every camera pointed at the constituency. Dunno that they managed the second part. I didn't see much of her myself, certainly.
Anyway, the point is that there's only one candidate at this election which has any chance at all of changing the direction of this government.
None of the others might be Prime Minister by autumn. Nobody else who wins can do that. There's only one candidate who can probably unseat the failing prime minister.
Would be voting more in hope than expectation of course.
He won't be very different. Certainly he's the same on Israel's genocide, on taxing wealth, on fiscal rules preventing government investment, on private industry being better than government owned industry, on capitalism, on the bond market, on the monarchy, on the pointless drug war, on conflating protest with terrorism, on the house of lords, on AI, on Free Software, on copyright, on age-gating and surveilling the internet.
But maybe that one difference, "public 'control' without ownership of industry" is at least a bit better than just Starmer thinking the state is powerless against American AI? He might try a bit harder to build more houses?
So not voting in expectation of anything really changing here, but voting for the only candidate who will even be in a position to try.
If you dislike Starmer and prefer any of the other candidates, if you prefer Greens, or Conservatives, or Restore, or Reform, or Lib Dem, or anarchy or antifa or woke then you should vote for the Labour Party candidate to cause Starmer's downfall.
You should only be voting against Starmer's Labour Party if you are happy with Starmer's Labour government and want Starmer to stay.
And only like 75,000 people even get to mark a ballot.
"Restore" are the splitters from Reform (who are in turn the Nativist right wing party splitters from the Conservatives).
They left Reform because Reform weren't racist enough for them, mostly. Their vote count is key here. Will their vote be higher than the Labour/Reform margin?
I think probably it will.
So the Restore Party is the spoiler that forces the PM out of office by splitting the nazi vote and allowing in a challenger to the PM.
Insane election. 😵‍💫
Apparently nobody conducted an exit poll, so we'll find out in the morning.
#ukpol #makerfield

Burn ham or Burn Oil?
Sounds like first policies are going to be more oil drilling and taking "control" of Thames Water.
Note that more oil drilling will NOT reduce the price of energy to the consumer, nor do much to increase sovereign energy independence. It will however mean lots of profits to the party donors from the oil industry, and of course mean more heat-domes and wildfires and floods and rising sea levels. More death from heatstroke.
Note also that "control" of Thames Water is not nationalization, not "ownership", it's just really more (likely toothless) regulation of private industry.
Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
RE: #labour #ukpol #burnham

So, maybe all you really can hope for from an acceptance speech is a bit of empty rhetoric, but that is indeed what we got here.
Unity and decentralization and a promise that he has a plan.
Unity is easy to say, but requires unity to achieve since you ain't in control of all the factions.
Decentralization tends to be fought by centralized powers, and is a tactic really not a strategy. What do you hope to achieve with it? Can end up just remote offices for centralized power.
And that plan he reckons he has? I look forward to hearing what it actually is.
#ukpol #burnham

France is on fire, Britain isn't far off. And yet the right wing parties in the UK are united on their policy of: *fingers in ears* lalalala.
Could almost make you nostalgic for Boris (I said almost).
#ukpol

Burnham has been made leader of the Labour party then. No other candidates got the required number of nominations so it's a coronation.
He has a few things to say.
He's proud. The party is united, he says, and now they'll put that power of unity to give people hope back. And he is ready to build on Kier's foundation. Thanks Kier, for all the NHS work and renters rights and rebuilding the nation's reputation (??).
He does like to name-check all the various towns and unions of the country. Just listing them. They made Labour, apparently.
We must recognize that this generation of politicians, including Burnham himself, have failed. Four decades of neoliberalism have not been kind to all those places he listed.
He pledges to be better, and will do five things.
1) Work relentlessly to build a culture of one Labour team. No infighting. Wants to eradicate the split. End factional politics.
I guess end Starmer's war on the left then? 🤨
2) Work to build a new politics. This is the last chance for change, and we must take it together. Tell people what Labour will do, not just pick fights with other parties. Seek consensus with those other parties instead, to improve the political discourse.
3) Change political direction: know exactly where he stands and set a direction that is distinctively Labour. No out-greening greens or out-reforming reform or wearing tory clothes. Boldly confidently authentically Labour.
Housing, water, energy, transport, all broken due to privatization and concentration of wealth and power.
Four decades of political power draining from regions to corporations and central government ends now.
Take back the slogan "take back control" from the right, who gave away power to corps and quangos.
Life should be more affordable.
4) Be a leader for the north, south, east and west, for Scotland and Northern Ireland (aw, shame for the midlanders 🤣 ).
Gonna do to everywhere what he done for Manchester he reckons.
Kids shouldn't have to leave their home towns to prosper.
5) Take power back from westminster and give it to the place where you live.
More power for regions, to run trains for passengers not shareholders. Improve high-streets, and back shops and pubs, and education, and reindustrialization.
He's gonna be pro-business.
Add all that together and he reckons we'll bring back hope.
Thanks a few people in particular.
He says he knows what he believes and what he wants to do, he has a plan. He wants change, to be close to the people.
He wants it to be Andy 4 us. Labour 4 us. Bring back hope.
#ukpol #burnham #labourParty

Burnham removing Mahmood from Home Secretary is great. Being an authoritarian monster, she belongs on the back benches not anywhere near the seat of government.
👂️👈
Wait, I'm hearing that she's to be the chancellor instead?
Well, um. Oh. Okay.
Promoting Shabana Mehmood to chancellor seems to be the most weak dumb move Burnham could possibly make.
She's authoritarian and fiscally inexperienced having shown no sign she understands what money is or how investment works or what a fiscal multiplier is. She'll likely treat the budget like a household or business accounts.
Good luck everyone.
#ukpol #ShabanaMahmood

Don't get me wrong, I certainly think y'all should abandon those ten apps and come join me on the free internet, away from corporate ownership in free unowned spaces where no big money players can control the playing-field. Take away from big money that feed that they use to point your kids and you at whatever scape-goat target they want, from migrants to trans people, from the disabled on benefits to kids using mobile phones.
But you're talking about installing a gateway on the entire internet and giving the government the power to decide who is allowed to use it or not.
That isn't going to get you away from those monopoly capitalists, it's going to entrench them and give them a cosy relationship with an authoritarian government that's about to change to being both authoritarian and also racist and sexist and nativist and far-right-wing.
We want to break up these monopolies and decentralize the power they have and destroy all advertising.
This will do the opposite of that. It is an attempt to enclose the internet commons for corporate interests. It will do that.
It can not be done in a way that protects privacy and anyone saying it can probably has shares in Palantir or similar who will expect to be paid to run these government gateways on internet publishing and who will then leak all your data that they lied about collecting.
#ukpol #internet #socialMediaBan

OBrien on the radio thinks that its okay to ban kids from Youtube even though their exam revision videos are on youtube, because the revision videos will just end up somewhere else.
He thinks though that the suicide encouragement and terrible anorexia mutual support will not simply end up somewhere else I guess. 🤷‍♂️
"No downside to this at all" he reckons. 🤣
"Nobody sensible can be against this ban"
This is what irks me most. The absolute refusal to see any issues at all in the ban. Just refusing to understand that there's any support help or encouragement for kids on these forums. That they are only places for radicalisation and bullying.
TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, X, Threads, Facebook and Kick.
I note that Bluesky didn't make the blacklist. I expect it'll be added during debate. Can't list everything though, so the kids will surely just go to whoever isn't listed? 4-chan seems to not be included? What a strange list.
I don't use any of them besides Youtube so won't be forced into ID checks for them myself. My youtube account is itself over 18 years old so don't think they'll ask.
#ukpol #socialMedia

Aw, he nearly cried as he gave up his job. He's lost the confidence of of the parliamentary party and say's he'll stand down.
Two year Kier they'll call him.
Looking like Burnham might be coronated without even a Labour Party MPs vote then. Just nominated unopposed.
That's probably bad for him really. Needs some kind of media spectacle in which he can lay out his plan for the country.
Maybe Streeting will step in and give us a competition.
#ukpol #twoYearKier #kierStarmer #starmer

The guy in charge of the UK's defense has quit, saying he can't do the job in this dangerous world with these budgetary constraints.
🧵
#ukpol #defense

Binface has been doing daily videos the last week or so. Of variable quality. Didn't really like the Divine Comedy karaoke one.
Here's his message to the aliens though.
These guys on this planet are using "democracy", well, some of them are.. Sort of.
Everyone come visit, but not all at once, the humans can get a little bit prickley about immigration.
#ukpol #clacton #binface

The press have been hounding Farage. Pointing out his corruption. Asking what he has spent the millions of pounds he's been gifted on.
Question doesn't really make sense to me. Money is fungible. The money went onto his money pile. He's spent money since, but was it that money? Or different money? How do you even know or measure that?
Anyway, he's fed up with it all so is standing down to cause a by election. At which he will stand. Imaging, wrongly, that this might make corruption charges go away. Other parties seem to be saying they won't dignify it with a contest, so he might be unopposed.
Could be just him and Count Binface. Would be properly hilarious if Binface won. I'd vote Binface in that case for sure.
#ukpol #farage #corruptFinance

How much more frequent do Tony Blair's "rare interventions" have to get before the stenographers stop reporting them as 'rare'?
#ukpol #blair

Congratulations to Andy Burnham's new government in their huge achievement of arresting hundreds of terrorists today. What a coop! The streets will be safer tonight thanks to Burnham's quick thinking action in arresting hundreds of people for...
What? Really?
..arresting hundreds of people for planning to read poems in a terrorising manor, saying "Good Morning" to some protestors in a terroristic way, setting up a terror stage for terror music to be played on, clapping terroristicly, and holding up terror signs.
Some might say it's the state and police forces doing the terrorising here but of course don't say it in public or you'll be arrested and thrown in jail for terrorism.
#ukpol #terrorism

What is it about the AI companies that invested billions of pounds in your funds and companies which first made you think they might have the solution to modern ills Mr Blair?
Was it the first hundred million dollars, or did the subsequent hundreds of millions of dollars also help convince you?
#ai #blair #ukpol

I see the prime minister and home secretary are lying, just blatantly lying, about the existence of technology which can tell how old someone is and whether an image is porn or not.
They claim this technology already exists in phones and just needs to be turned on.
I mean, judges at trials haven't been able to describe what is or isn't pornography, but apparently I guess they should have just turned on the software switch in their phones! Easy!
No phone can know it's operator's age. Even if the phone's owner is registered, it can't know if it's being operated by it's owner or not.
The PM and Home Sec are lying that they think there's no reporting, no data-collection, no spying, no monitoring, involved in their impossible imaginary tech they demand must be implemented in 3 months.
They are lying that adults can turn it off without having to register the owner of the phone and it's ID with a central database.
Never head anyone even mention the environmental consequences of burning power to pass every image a camera takes through a large neural network to have it be classified as porn or not, so at least they haven't had to lie about it being free and easy and not burning energy to classify every image taken in the UK.
Good thing they have little chance of being in power when their deadline hits and the tech companies have failed to turn on the imaginary software switch to do impossible things.
Sadly, Burnham's government will probably do much the same.
#ukpol #tech #clientSideScanning #survelienceState

Owen Jones has gone down and interviewed some randoms. Only seems to have found one sane one.
Not a great deal of hope for Binface fans here though I'm afraid.
His supporters are so cynical about politics they don't care, they're all like "all politicians are doing it" which isn't true at all but they doesn't get through to people
That sense of cynicism and pessimism saturates this country
#ukpol #binface #farage #clacton

The talking heads today are SHOCKED, SHOCKED to hear how terrible it is failing to find work when you're a young person who isn't in education or training.
Laura K was surprised to hear that they aren't in fact all feckless layouts but nearly 90% of them would prefer to do some work for a wage really if only they could find someone willing to do the swap.
A new number is produced:
The state spends only one pound on trying to get people jobs for every twenty five pounds they spend on welfare for potential workers.
Laura K is shocked again.
I see where this is going.
Will the answer be to take money currently spent on the welfare of workers and instead give it to big business to subsidize their wage bill?
Will it?
🤔
#ukpol #privateOwnership #publicWealth #coOp